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Monday, May 16, 2011

Forgotten by Cat Patrick

London Lane doesn't remember what happened yesterday, or the day before. She doesn't remember the past at all. Every night when she goes to sleep, she wakes up having forgotten everything that's happened. But she can remember the future. London writes notes to herself so she can get through each day, but one day, she meets a new boy at school, Luke. As hard as she tries, London can't remember anything about Luke in the future. It's completely blank. Shortly after Luke comes into her life, London starts having a disturbing vision of the future. She needs to figure out if what hasn't happened yet can be changed.

I really liked this, as long as I didn't think about it too hard. I wasn't completely clear on the rules. Clearly, London doesn't forget everything when she goes to sleep. You know, she knows how to walk and dress herself and talk and stuff. The rules seem to be that if the thing or person is in her future, since she remembers the future, she remembers it. This is why she recognizes her mother and her best friend Jamie, even if she has no idea what they've ever talked about previously. If London doesn't write herself a note about what's going to happen on a particular day, she's just as clueless as anyone else, because when it gets to that day, she doesn't remember it anymore (because now it's in the present). Whew. Still with me? OK. So, Jamie asks to borrow a shirt the night before and London says sure but doesn't write it down so she has no clue why Jamie shows up the next morning. But! She braces herself because she knows Jamie is going to ask her a particular question. Why is that? She shouldn't know exactly when that was going to happen, should she? Or is it that because it has consequences in the future she still knew? I wasn't clear about that.

And it just didn't make sense how London could function at school. She'd have to like, relearn calculus every day, reread the book they're reading in English every day. When she starts dating Luke, and as the months go by, she has to reread all her notes every single morning, which become more and more as time passes, so she'll remember him. So she's have to do that with like, everything.

So yeah. It didn't quite make sense. But if I'm willing to just accept the kind of shaky rules, then it was really interesting and I didn't want to put it down. I finished it in like a day. It was such a different concept, AND it turned out not to be remotely supernatural, which I was very glad about. I was a little worried there, but then it was OK.

Spoilers coming up.

London keeps having this vision of a funeral. She's scared of it, wondering whose funeral will it be? At first she thinks it's her father's (she hasn't had any contact with her father since she was a little girl), but then she realizes her father is there, as is the grandmother she doesn't remember meeting. She tracks down her grandmother to a nursing home, only to realize her grandmother has died, which doesn't make any sense. Then London realizes she's having a memory of the past.

This realization leads to her unlocking other past memories. She figures out what happened to her, and why Luke isn't in any of her memories from the future. The realizations London comes to are kind of sad and disturbing, but ultimately things are hopefully at the end.

I don't want to give too much away, because I think you should read it! I'll just say I liked that everything wasn't all fixed at the end. She isn't "cured." And I just have to not think to hard about things like, "How will she ever function as an adult? What if she wants children? How will it work?" Just let it go. Let it go.

I guess because those are things she does in the future, and she can remember her future so she knows how to do it. Yeah, it's a little hard to wrap your head around, but if you don't think too hard it's really enjoyable and suspenseful.

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